Studies VII: The PCOT and Electoral Performance

Below are translations of two communiques (originally in Arabic) from the Tunisian Communist Workers Party (PCOT). The first is a campaign statement in advance of the Constituent Assembly election in October, the second is a post-election statement explaining the party’s view of the elections and its performance. This is a ‘far left’ party which won three seats in the Constituent Assembly (its program was covered earlier this year on this blog). Of those represented in the assembly the PCOT is certain among (if not the) party farthest to the political left (another hard left trend, the Democratic Modernist Pole, won five seats). It may be the most ideologically extreme party of any particular ideological tendency though it has enough popularity where it does not quite warrant being called a fringe party. Its members had tussles with Salafists in the months before the election. The PCOT was certainly in the ‘secular’ column insofar as the polarization between religious and secular parties was concerned and the party probably suffered, as has been noted, from its atheism/secularism and generally unabashed communism. Its rhetoric on religious issues has been laid out on this blog previously. The party has historically had a hardline on religious matters and one can see this even in the translations below where campaign tactics involving houses of worship used by its opponents are compared to the behavior of the old Ben Ali regime. Its ideological tracts include harsh invectives against Rachid Ghannouchi and Islamist political philosophy and personalities in general. Some of these are rather nuanced, for instance its stance on the hijab (it ran candidates for the constituent assembly who themselves wore hijab). It also made an effort to appeal to religious voters by distancing itself from a stance against religious practice and religious people during this past summer. Being a communist party of the Enver Hoxa variety calls up certain connotations for many Tunisians and others. (they ran candidates under the name al-badil ath-thawri or Revolutionary Alternative, leaving out ‘communist’). A party that declares itself committed to democracy and human rights but also has to explain its view of the dictatorship of the proletariat and its opinion of Marx or atheism is bound to face challenges in a country where many people are observant Muslims (it is worth mentioning that the PCOT was relatively less hostile toward the religious set during the campaign than the PDP, for example). But there is a constituency for such a party in Tunisia and its members have gained some credibility from non-communists for having been rather harshly treated and detained under Ben Ali. Hard secularism proved less advantageous in October’s election and the overall results do not point to an Islamist take over and it is likely Nahdha and the center left and left wing parties in the new Constituent Assembly will have to compromise rather than impose narrowness on one another. Of course your blogger is always interested the idiosyncratic and obscure but will post some translations from some of the larger left-leaning parties later on.

‘A Convergence of Civilizations’

Writers often discuss culture and politics and religion and misery in mostly Muslim countries in terms of exceptions and global civilizational or ideological competition with ‘the west’ or ‘secularism’. Such things make world history simple and validate their target audiences’ preconceptions and even religious convictions. They can even help provide as sense of certainty, superiority and identity. Many people have written against such things from various perspective. Many observers struggle to place the recent Arab uprisings in this framework of clashing civilizations and Eurabias. In A Convergence of Civilizations: The Transformation of Muslim Societies Around the World (Columbia, trans. 2011) Youssef Courbage and Emmanuel Todd write: